Chapter 40 — What the Cold Left
The driver saw them first and had time to say one word.
There were nine, standing across the road at the fourth bend, and they were not in a hurry. They did not shout, or charge, or spread out the way raiders do. They simply stood in the road in the gray dawn light, and waited for the cart to stop, and when the two guards drew, one of the nine lifted a hand and the guards' horses went mad.
It was over in under a minute. Sierra read the report four times afterward and it never got any better.
Both guards dead. The driver dead. No arrow wounds, no sword wounds — the healer who examined them wrote cause unclear three times and then, at the bottom, in a different and shakier hand, frost in the lungs.
Vanessa Pierce did not run.
The tracks said so. The trac
